It’s almost as if Wan, who shares a story credit with Ingrid Bisu, and screenwriter Akela Cooper, don’t trust their audience enough to know or care about anything beyond Powerpoint-style bullet point dialogue, like when dreamboat policeman Kekoa Shaw ( George Young) tells Madison’s suspicious sibling Sydney ( Maddie Hasson) that “the doctor said your sister had three miscarriages in the last two years.” Madison’s friends and family members are also used as props to set up more clammy scare scenes. Almost every set piece or kill scene feels anticlimactic. These are fine enough elements for a horror movie, but not when they’re built up to such a laughable degree, and without much visual flair or distinction. Flickering television and phone screens, unexpected faces reflected in glass surfaces, and gaunt wraiths who all seem to shop at Hot Topic.

First, he presents us with the canned set-up for a confrontation, then we watch him slowly resolve tension through scare tactics that make the American-produced J-horror remakes of the mid-'00s seem cutting edge. Wan seems to love this style of strawman drama. Stuff like “How many times do I have to watch my children die inside of you” and “maybe you need to stop getting pregnant.”ĭerek soon gets got: he dies by Gabriel’s wispy hands, and in a scene that looks suspiciously like a cut scene from Wan’s “ Insidious” movies. Madison’s pregnant at the time, and Derek, who’s obviously not long for this world, blames her for previous miscarriages, which are otherwise not visualized, or built up to in a meaningful way beyond thin expository dialogue. Madison’s consistently presented as an opportunity for tacky effects-driven violence, as in her first scene, where she’s thrown head-first against a wall by her abusive husband Derek ( Jake Abel). What’s it like to be stuck inside the head of Madison ( Annabelle Wallis), a tortured murder suspect who can’t remember how she’s related to Gabriel (Ray Chase), a feature-less silhouette with long black hair and a bad habit of killing people? “Malignant” doesn’t provide any satisfying answers because Madison’s creators treat her like an opportunity for obnoxious shock scares instead of a fully realized character or, better yet, the emotional anchor for a feature-length horror movie.

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